CTL = Fitness

Oops.

It's been a little while since last post. Forgive me, busy days lately.

So a quick update. My training continues and my leg is holding up OK. A little while back I talked about the "Thin Blue Line". Here is the lastest version:


As you can see, the blue line continue to move onwards and upwards at a steady rate. To keep that line rising, you have to train a bit more and/or a bit harder than you did the previous week. It's relentless like that. Back off the effort and the blue line starts heading south again.

Training now comprises a variety of workouts including basic core endurance work, some focussed tempo and time trial pace efforts, and some lactate tolerance work thrown into the mix to give me a bit of a boost for when I attempt that 500m TT in a couple of weeks from now. I am riding 5-days a week now and doing the occasional race.

Last weekend I raced a local criterium at Heffron Park. I rolled over the line for 3rd, although my attempt to sprint for a win never eventuated as a couple of guys next to me crashed and so I pulled out of the effort to ensure they were the only ones to hit the deck. What my training has lacked has been some time at the track to do some sprint and start practice. Getting time for the track has been a bit tricky lately. I'll need a couple of sessions before doing my TT.

So, back to the blue line (Chronic Training Load). As shown in the chart above, my CTL has now reached the 50 TSS/day mark. And today marks exactly 5-months since I first put my bike on a trainer and tentatively pedalled for 15-minutes. So it's not a stellar ramp rate in training load (roughly 2 to 2.5 points/week) by any measure but being a CTL "hare" is not smart training anyway. It is a prudent and manageable increase in the training workload.

One of the "old" power training sayings is:

CTL = Fitness

Well it's a pretty broad statement but I thought I'd give an example of what it means.

Under the chart above (the one with the blue line) is another chart covering the same time period. This one shows my best 60-min power in each 4-week block. The orange and blue columns show my best 60-min power expressed as Normalised Power and Average Power respectively. As you can see, as the CTL blue line rises, so has my 1-hour power.

Simple really. Train more, get fitter. It will keep doing that for some time. Until it doesn't of course! But that's another story.